Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2011 01:03:07 -0600 From: Josh Paetzel <josh@tcbug.org> To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Cc: Bruce Cran <bruce@cran.org.uk>, freebsd-current@freebsd.org, Devin Teske <dteske@vicor.com>, Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org>, freebsd-sysinstall@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD Installer Roadmap Message-ID: <201102220103.20158.josh@tcbug.org> In-Reply-To: <EA1368DF-9728-4492-B1FC-5F7C2B521DE7@vicor.com> References: <4D35CFFB.3010302@freebsd.org> <201102211612.51233.josh@tcbug.org> <EA1368DF-9728-4492-B1FC-5F7C2B521DE7@vicor.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
--nextPart1403105.siBJnKaS6S
Content-Type: Text/Plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
On Monday, February 21, 2011 08:38:03 pm Devin Teske wrote:
>=20
> Really, the crux of the issue is that our organization is **just now**
> migrating off of FreeBSD-4 (yes, it's true... there are over 1,000
> FreeBSD-4.11 machines running in production at this very moment spanning
> the entire United States, parts of India, and parts of the Indo-pacific
> rim). Worse? We just added yet-another 200+ to those ranks in the past 2
> months.
>=20
> My hat is off to you sir... as I envy your position that you can be so
> free-moving. We are encumbered by entrenched methods and do not have the
> luxury of trying new things for the sake of change (case in-point, since
> bsdinstall brings nothing new to the table that we rely upon, it truly
> would be change for the sake of change in our organization).
>=20
> Fin de dialectics.
>=20
>=20
>=20
>=20
> --
> Cheers,
> Devin Teske
Maintaining sysinstall for 4.x is indeed a NOOP, since features aren't bein=
g=20
added to it, and the featureset that sysinstall supports is pretty much in=
=20
line with the featureset in 4...no ZFS, no geom_*, etc etc etc.
On the other hand, maintaining sysinstall for the next N years of new FreeB=
SD=20
releases seems hard, when it's already missing features compared to what=20
=46reeBSD supports, and that's likely to continue to grow.
I totally agree that for internal use, migrating thousands of lines of code=
=20
makes no sense whatsoever, especially if sysinstall meets your needs and yo=
u=20
don't care about the functionality it doesn't have. Exporting that to the=
=20
community seems to be a questionable use of resources.
I'm no stranger to large deployments. With my ${WORK} hat on we can instal=
l a=20
thousand FreeBSD systems in a week. In my 16+ years of involvement with=20
=46reeBSD I've written three automated installers...quite frankly, ditching=
=20
sysinstall for that happened really fast.
I do admit to being a tad curious where you find systems that can run FreeB=
SD=20
4 at this point. A single socket intel shows up as 8 or 12 CPUs these days=
,=20
more than enough to tie 4.x into knots. Add in disk controllers, NICs, ACP=
I=20
(modern systems use that for nearly everything it seems) and suddenly an=20
installer seems the least of the concerns.
I suppose my last question is along the lines of, "If adding geom_mirror=20
support to sysinstall was easy, why has it been 6+ years since gmirror made=
=20
it's appearance in FreeBSD and you still can't create or install to a gmirr=
or=20
with sysinstall?"
=20
=2D-=20
Thanks,
Josh Paetzel
--nextPart1403105.siBJnKaS6S
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc
Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.15 (FreeBSD)
iQEcBAABAgAGBQJNY1+3AAoJEKFq1/n1feG2WSYIAJ980gk0UpqyK+KcevHJQoxQ
1hxgj+UP4/cbpdyNn3tjOck9W3Hxtnz9zhdoZOEQOz/MtoCJzhE03n4ysnzC7lhs
vwNduIyoV1hViFbsW681y56MmPn30LptTvyzhkYbMHuJQa5GuQr+ptXgQPHIBQC/
Cg9xcEDhUrWUhHqK1b2jZ3puWZNyeSOCI/ixWgdx4zCfRO4NiL2nNW5KAZaTf/rE
I2R9+B2c6cU/ikMdcZaIo5hCmsNxKsBO3wgAel6EvX1RV4vCettHOTSaeC4fSoD6
fl3Vso/eR5aWe8PWgHBXBi5BtJRQ+ZYyiHNFJJYpLclL27Qp4uVJ7jFeljcKL7o=
=Bzo2
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
--nextPart1403105.siBJnKaS6S--
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?201102220103.20158.josh>